A meeting today could decide whether Australian consumers get to use a new website and star rating system for healthy food, or whether it has all been a wasted effort.

Australia’s new star-rating food labels are designed to help people make better choices about their diet, in the hope of cutting obesity and related health impacts, which add to strains on virtually all sectors of healthcare.

But the system and the algorithm that ranks one food over another has aggravated industry lobbyists representing foods with very little positive health benefits.

Now, the government body working on the Front of Pack Labelling reforms say they are conducting meetings for the new phase of the project, and talking with health ministers over the state of the controversial push for better labels.

Professor Geoff Dobb from the Australian Medical Association is on the Front of Pack Labelling Oversight Committee, which has taken over from the existing Steering Committee, as planned.

He says today’s meeting could be a turning point for the food labelling improvements.

“The Steering Committee has oversight of the development of the Front of Pack Labelling System and that included representatives from public health organisations, consumer organisations, and the food and grocery industry and the Beverages Council and so on,” Dr Dobb said.

“We've now moved on after the approval of the system by the food ministers, so that's state ministers as well as the Commonwealth minister, from designing the system to actually implementing it and the Oversight Committee is there to oversee the implementation.

Professor Dobb says there is some chance that the entire project may fall on its face.

“I think it would be a huge disappointment to the Australian community,” he said.

“Because I think people do want to know what it is that they're eating and it will be an opportunity lost in terms of putting one brick in the wall to address the epidemic of overweight and obesity that we have in Australia.”

Recent revelations by the ABC and other media outlets have suggested that the federal Health Department and Minister Fiona Nash were being pressed by lobbyists on the very day that a website for people to calculate the healthiness of their foods was “prematurely” made available.